Installing Node.js

Introduction

Node.js is a JavaScript runtime environment that allows you to run JavaScript outside of your web browser. We will need this for some exercises in the upcoming lessons. To get started, there are some required tools we need before we can install Node on your system.

We’re going to install it using nvm (Node Version Manager), because it makes it easy to change Node versions and upgrade Node. There is another tool called npm that we will later use to install the various libraries and tools used in JavaScript environments. It can be easy to confuse these two, so read carefully!

Node is also very easy to install using nvm, so this should go quickly :)

Lesson overview

This section contains a general overview of topics that you will learn in this lesson.

Learn how to Install nvm (Node Version Manager) and npm.
Learn how to run Node console.

Installing NVM

Step 0: Prerequisites

To install nvm properly, you’ll need curl. Run the command below to install curl:

sudo apt install curl

Note: You may need to update the Ubuntu package lists to the latest version for the Curl installation to complete. If so, run the command below:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

Step 1: Downloading and Installing NVM

Run this command to install nvm:

curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.40.1/install.sh | bash

Step 2: Initializing NVM

In the terminal there should be some directions on how to initialize nvm. If not, (or if you don’t feel like copying from the terminal), run these commands:

export NVM_DIR="$([ -z "${XDG_CONFIG_HOME-}" ] && printf %s "${HOME}/.nvm" || printf %s "${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/nvm")"
[ -s "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" ] && \. "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" # This loads nvm

You can verify nvm is installed by running the command:

command -v nvm

If this returns nvm: command not found, close the terminal and re-open it.

On macOS 10.15 and above, the default shell is now zsh. During installation, nvm will look for a .zshrc file in your user home directory. By default, this file does not exist so we need to create it.

To create the .zshrc file and start the nvm installation, run the following commands:

touch ~/.zshrc

curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.40.1/install.sh | bash

Restart your terminal, or copy and paste the following into your terminal and press Enter:

export NVM_DIR="$HOME/.nvm"
[ -s "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" ] && \. "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" # This loads nvm
[ -s "$NVM_DIR/bash_completion" ] && \. "$NVM_DIR/bash_completion" # This loads nvm bash_completion

Test your nvm installation by running:

nvm --version

For more information, read about installing and updating from NVM’s GitHub.

Installing Node

Now that we have nvm installed, we can install Node.

Step 1: Installation

Run:

nvm install --lts

This will install the most recent stable version of Node in ‘long-term support’ (LTS), and you’ll see a lot of output in the terminal. If everything worked, you should see something similar to this somewhere in the lines of output (with the X’s replaced with actual numbers):

Downloading and installing Node vXX.xx.x...

If not, close the terminal, re-open it and run nvm install --lts again.

Step 2: Setting the Node version

We need to tell nvm which version of Node to use when we run the node command. It’s easy; just run the following command:

nvm use --lts

We have told nvm to use the most recent LTS version of Node installed on our computer. You must use the LTS version of Node to avoid incompatibilities with packages we will be installing in future lessons. The LTS version of Node is a version that is guaranteed support for thirty months after its initial release. It is more stable and compatible with a variety of packages than a non-LTS version of Node.

Now when you run node -v, you should see vXX.xx.x or something similar (with the X’s replaced with actual numbers).

If you see that, you have successfully installed Node!

Using Node console

For convenience, Node provides an interactive console which lets you run and edit your JavaScript code right in your terminal, similar to IRB for ruby. This is quite helpful to debug or test small snippets of your code quickly without opening the browser every time.

To run the Node console, open up your terminal and type node. Type .exit to quit the console.